facebook application development

This week, social media news was dominated by three things: Facebook privacy concerns, Twitter troubles and one seriously golden girl, Betty White.

If you missed anything over the course of the last seven days — we know, the thought of losing all your Twitter followers was so tragic as to be totally debilitating — we’ve got all the top stories right here. Read up, get educated and wow all your Twitter followers (who have been thankfully restored) with your ample knowledge of all things social media and tech.

1). Betty White on “Saturday Night Live”: Every Single Sketch: Betty White hosted Saturday Night Live, realizing the dreams of more than 500,000 Facebook users. Reception from fans and critics alike was mostly positive, and a day later White’s gig led Google searches and Twitter conversations.

2). Twitter Bug Lets You Control Who Follows You: Twitter had an embarrassing bug on its hands –- one that allowed users to make anyone follow them.

3). Another Next Generation iPhone Found, Dissected: A company generally well-known for its secrecy, Apple has been losing the next generation iPhone left and right; this time, a slew of images and a video of another iPhone 4G prototype appeared on a Vietnamese site.

4). AT&T Has iPhone Exclusivity Until 2012: It was speculative before given the lack of independent confirmation, but now apparently Apple has gone on record to confirm that the original deal signed with AT&T for iPhone exclusivity back in 2007 was a five-year deal.

5). Google and Verizon to Launch Tablet Computer: Add a big new twist to the tablet computing wars. The Wall Street Journal is confirming that Google plans to bring a tablet computer to market with Verizon Wireless.

6). NYU Students Raise More than $100,000 to Build Facebook Alternative: Four New York University students have a vision to build Diaspora, “an open source personal web service that will put individuals in control of their data,” or essentially the anti-Facebook.

7). Adobe Responds to Apple’s Attacks on Flash with New Ad Campaign: Two weeks ago, Steve Jobs published his now infamous “Thoughts on Flash” memo on Apple.com. Adobe has now responded with its own message, a message of “love,” “choice” and “open markets.”

8). Obama: iPads Make Information a Distraction: Although before his inauguration U.S. President Barack Obama was rarely seen without his BlackBerry, he has criticized the current crop of popular consumer gadgets for helping make information a “distraction.”

9). BlackBerry Tablet to Launch This Year: Research in Motion is set to enter the tablet computing market with plans to unveil a 8.9-inch BlackBerry device later this year.

10. Android Now Outselling iPhone: Smartphones carrying Google’s Android operating system outsold the iPhone in the first quarter of 2010, according to new research from NPD.

Image courtesy of iStockphoto, Antagain

Tags: adobe, android, apple, blackberry, facebook, Flash, Google, ipad, iphone, television, twitter

While Facebook has already released their Facebook for Adobe Air application, Adobe recently released their own desktop Facebook application called “Photo Uploader”. The new desktop application lets you perform a large number of Facebook activities including reading your stream, posting comments and updates, viewing your friends, and more. While there are a number of desktop tools for managing your Facebook account, this is probably the best one I’ve seen so far. While there are some minor bugs to hash out, this application definitely has a lot of potential.

One additional feature is the ability to upload photos simply by dragging them over a running version of the application. While I still prefer to load up Facebook within the browser, there are many people that have a preference for running desktop applications. As Erick Schonfeld wrote the other day though, none of these applications do anything to resolve the noise issue. It’s great that I can follow and friend people around the web, however finding the most relevant information to me still isn’t possible.

There are a few people attempting to resolve the problem through new forms of search algorithms. While I think search is a legitimate approach, I want a system that does automated filtering for me. Yes, it’s easy to theorize about a solution, but developing one is much more complex. That’s not to say nobody is working on a solution. Philtro, a D.C. metro based startup, is working on their own solution to the problem. By letting users take advantage of the “thumbs up” and “thumbs down” rating system previously used by Facebook, the company hopes to develop an increasingly relevant stream for users.

We’re still at the early phases of developing new discovery mechanisms to easily sift through the overwhelming amount of content being produced by our friends and other contacts. For now, users have a diverse set of tools to choose from to interact with their personal streams, including the Facebook stream. As of a week ago, you can add the Photo Uploader for Facebook application to that mix. Do you prefer to interact with Facebook from the website or from desktop applications? Do you think the Photo Uploader application is better than other desktop applications you’ve used in the past?